


offbeat

by dokkal



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, minor miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23410429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dokkal/pseuds/dokkal
Summary: Dimitri has been acting off as of late, and Claude is unsure how to approach him
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 80





	offbeat

The first summer morning rises from the horizon. There comes a distant meow from their apartment balcony, the muted rumbling of someone doing laundry downstairs, sunlight filling in the parallel openings of their window shades, and the shadow of a warmth besides Claude’s arms.

Claude stirs and mumbles in his sleep, brows pinched together from the sun boring light onto his eyelids, and shifts uncomfortably on his pillow until the annoying light is gone. It was too late though, he’s already awake, disturbed by nature.

Claude wakes up from a vague dream of sitting on the rocks of a beach, under a cloaked night sky, watching schools of sparks of unknown origins lighting up the dark, and dying out in small flecks here and there until a light sheen glows over him before he came to, which he assumes was the sun at work.

At the foot of their bed, there is a murmur coming from the balcony, and the satin curtains and glass screens leading to the outside space were...slightly parted. Claude presumes it to be someone from their neighboring building, as the residential abodes are built quite close to each other, but he has no way to say for sure.

Claude’s eyes flutter, head still straying on the narrow border of dreamland and reality, but another coming murmur knocks him further against the latter. Someone was cooing, but it was short lived.

He rolls onto the side where Dimitri once laid, then after a moment, he slips into his slippers. Sleep plagues his mind, telling him to flop back down, even though he woke up from a long, undisturbed sleep. Oh, it’ll go away once he rinses his face.

Claude finds Dimitri perching against the rail of their balcony, rare for him to do so. Claude usually wakes before he does, and Dimitri wouldn’t willingly wake up so early, not to mention leave his bed for the balcony. Well, today may be one of those weird off days. Even he has days like this.

“Guess who~” Claude sings from behind. Dimitri doesn’t seem to notice him, even when Claude scoots next to him.

“Hmm….” Dimitri’s eyes are distant, staring at the stone building in front of them, but not really looking. He was mumbling a string of sounds that Claude wasn’t sure how to piece it into words he knows. Claude nudges him.

“Good morning, Dima.”

“Ah!” Dimitri’s eyes widen in surprise, grinning afterward. “Good morning.”

Dimitri almost immediately slips into Claude’s body, slotting himself in the most comfortable angle onto Claude from years of experience.

“Why can’t we just do this for hours,” Dimitri complains, yet again.

“I would stop time if I could,” Claude plays along. “But I can’t. I have work. You too.” Dimitri palms at Claude’s back with rubs.

After a whole lot of morning duties, they finally settle down, indulging in their easy homemade pancakes. Dimitri takes the bottle of maple syrup after Claude’s done.

“Hey, Claude,” Dimitri says, there was a hint of uncertainty lingering in his beckoning for Claude’s attention. Different from how Dimitri calls him in the morning.

“What is it?” Claude replies.

“Do you like…” Dimitri pauses. “Cats?”

“They’re O-K,” Claude says. Dimitri should know that already, remembering how many times they’ve encountered mean cats in the area around here throughout the years. But Claude doesn’t press. “I’m not good at handling them though. What’s up with that?”

Dimitri’s lips form a thin line, another wave of uncertainty seems to flush over him, as if that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

“Is this because you were cooing at a cat earlier?” Claude asks again, though he has already deduced a simple answer of the identity of the owner who was cooing. Could be Dimitri, could be their neighbor. As he digs into his pancake, he doesn’t see Dimitri flinching. “It could be just my imagination. Though whoever was cooing seemed pretty into it,” Claude continues, letting out a laugh. “Even woke me up.”

“Must be just your imagination,” Dimitri says a bit too quickly, “Ah -” Dimitri’s hand makes a small touch with Claude’s dominant hand as he slides the maple syrup onto the middle of the table with other condiments.

Claude raises his eyebrow at the rosy tint that begins to color Dimitri's cheeks. This is nothing too uncommon even after years being together, Claude cheers to that in his mind, enjoying the mild act of embarrassment that befalls on his lover’s face.

“Well, if you say so,” Claude says. The last sounds of his reply drawls out teasingly, a last chance for Dimitri to tell him anything else before they move on.

Claude’s eye finally falls on Dimitri’s plate. His breath hitches, ending with a strained laugh that doesn’t know where to go. “Hey, Dima. Isn’t that a bit too much syrup?”

“No. My syrup is fine.” Dimitri says. He eats the pancakes up anyways, leaving much maple syrup behind. Claude was unsure what part of their conversation he was embarrassed for, but he treasures this as another morning with him nonetheless. He feels sorry for the maple syrup though.

-

Every few mornings, the consistency of Dimitri waking before him and stationing himself on the balcony doesn’t bother him. Claude’s impressed, actually. But the rising pattern of Dimitri returning home hours later than normal is what puts Claude in a weird spot.

Dimitri isn’t exactly hiding it either, though he doesn’t mention his outings the slightest, and they’re barely worth noting considering how Dimitri is for one: terrible at lying and Claude will pick up immediately. Perhaps Dimitri really isn’t doing anything?

It leaves Claude with concern, unable to really mention it. He might look like he’s questioning his own faith in Dimitri, which is something Claude would never want to impede on. They don’t have trouble talking about this sort of issue, but it still felt too vague to report to Dimitri about it. However, it claws at his core that he doesn’t have any pointers to what Dimitri is up to.

A side of him justifies that by simply asking Dimitri what’s up with the outings lately. Then, most likely, Dimitri will tell him and then all of Claude’s worries were for naught. But Claude lets it go.

At the end of the day, Dimitri returns home all the same. Dimitri retires to bed, his movements always languid after a hot shower, relieving his strained muscles. He still takes up the side closest to the wall because he was there first. All the same.

Claude curls up beside Dimitri, bathing under the covers they both warmed up, into the warmth of his and the fresh scent of citrus emanating from him.

It’s all the same.

“Hey, Dima. Is there something up lately? Working overtime?”

“No…” Dimitri buries himself in Claude’s chest, nuzzling his face in it.

“If you need help with something, just say the word, okay?” Claude says. As if Dimitri doesn’t know that already, but it’s nice to say it again.

“Mm,” Dimitri responds. “Thank you.”

In another moment, Claude whispers against Dimitri’s ear, in the dead of night, where their breaths are all they could hear, where the movements of their bodies and the layered bed sheets are the only changes they can feel and see, “I love you,”

Claude can  _ feel _ Dimitri smile. “I love you too.”

Dimitri’s spotty practices leaving without much of a name for his destination continues, but Claude shrugs at it now. Curiosity killed the cat, you know?

  
  


-

On another normal evening, Claude pulls into the parking lot of their complex. He was let off from work early. With a summer holiday coming up, Claude whistles in anticipation, thinking it’ll be another well-spent holiday with his love. However, a lingering shadow that he still has yet been able to nip it off chews at the deep ends of his mind. He frowns, but shoves the thought away in quick succession. He swings his ring of keys with his index finger, happily, as he makes his way to home.

As he approaches the door, it was unlocked already. A sliver of the room inside could be seen.

Claude steels himself, refusing to breathe the moment he sees the moving back of Dimitri. He doesn’t register the few singing notes until Claude finally finds the guts in himself to breathe again. All sense of logic flies out his mind and out his ears.

Dimitri? Who is he talking to? Why is he perched onto the top of the sofa’s back as if it wouldn’t fall over? Is  _ Dimitri _ actually doing this? Would he really make his voice curdle to such a high pitched tone? To such a talk that he will for sure be embarrassed if others know about it?

Claude doesn’t know when to step in. And  _ who _ asides from him is good enough to woo Dimitri and convince him to—

“I love you so much,” He hears Dimitri confess in the most adoring, babyish voice he’s ever heard.

Claude hitches in his breath, thinks he might start hiccuping after this. He nearly jams his toe after swinging the door open in the blink of an eye, unable to reel in the think first, act second habit of his, revealing the truth once and for all before him.

Dimitri practically topples over the sofa backrest and onto the floor from the impact of the door opening. He was sitting on the backrest instead of the actual cushions meant for butts to sit on.

“Dimitri,” Claude utters softly, which takes just about every ounce of air in him to say it. It wasn’t a greeting to him, but merely the  _ only _ word his voice remembers to say when all fails to rise. It is now merely a word to fill a gap of time for Claude’s brain to start running again.

Dimitri’s face twists in pain, the impact finally hitting his shoulders which took most of the blow against the wooden floor.

“H-Hi, Claude,” Dimitri says awkwardly. He cries out half in pain, half unclear how to greet an unexpected encounter, which would be Claude’s forte, not his.

“What’s that lump in your sweater?” Claude’s eyes wander to the foreign shape on his all-too-familiar Dimitri.

“Um,” Dimitri struggles to respond timely, in which Claude was able to calm and shut the door gently.

The lump moves, slowly upwards Dimitri’s chest, the culprit finally appears, a pair of ears pop up, then the head of a cat.

“Well,” Claude releases a large sigh, surely the biggest sigh of the decade. Relief doesn’t wash over him just yet, his priority to access the situation before lowering his guard never rests. “I had no idea what you were doing with your spare time. So this is it?”

Claude scans the room, their apartment that’s the same, a new entity, then back to Dimitri. He remains unmoving, grounded to the floor with the cat.

“Yes,” Dimitri simply says, with a glimmer in his eyes that Claude can’t say he doesn’t believe in him.

Claude eyes the cat again, briefly studying her grey and white fur patterns. Then, he releases a tiny gasp, a maddening new realization climbs at a great speed onto the forefront of his priorities.

“YOU were talking that softly to a cat?” Laughter erupts from his lungs before he knows it, in which he tries to tone it down but fails. His heart flutters at a completely new unearthed side of Dimitri. He is always full of surprises in ways Claude never expects.

“No—stop that!” Dimitri tries to say, though none of his words come through strongly. Dimitri sinks even further to the ground if he could, giving out.

“I really, ah…” Claude tilts his head habitually, rubbing his temple. He recalls everything that happens these past few weeks. He huffs with a smile through the edges of his mouth, in disbelief and bewilderment.

“I...I apologize,” Dimitri reverts to a polite tone without realizing, his gaze cowers, unable to face him. He rises from the ground slowly, watching out for the cat with extra care. The baby cat rests on his arm comfortably without a damn care in the world, meowing for attention, good for her!

“...For being so dodgy to give you an answer. I really thought you didn’t like cats. So Ashe agreed to take care of her on my behalf since he’s got cats and all. And that’s…that’s where I’ve been going for the remainder of my time.”

“I...I said cats were okay, and you could have just told me,” Claude sighs. “Well. This is my own undoing for thinking into things too much.”

“Oh, Claude,” Dimitri says, almost sadly. “I don’t think you would like me sweet talking like that all day.”

“Yes I definitely would,” Claude interjects quickly, stepping forward. Dimitri slowly edges back until he reaches the back of their sofa, with nowhere to go, face wracked with nervousness.

“You forget?” Claude presses their forehead together, Dimitri’s eyes soften as they close their distance between their lips.

As they part, Claude smiles. “I love every single part of you, Dima,” Claude says his name with care, with a gentleness fading off on the last vowel that he only does for  _ Dima.  _ “In fact, I welcome it. Because I love you.”

“Next time, Claude, just ask me. I won’t care. Then this...whatever this mess is that I unknowingly created,” Dimitri’s grin falters, guilt lacing his words. “I’ll make it up for you however you want me to.”

“Right back at you, Dima. I’ll have to be much clearer with my words…”

“We both have much to learn.”

“Right we do.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> And so the cat, Dimitri, and Claude lived happily ever after!  
> Thank you for reading:)


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